Frayed Knights - Interview @ TPG

Jay Barnson has been interviewed at TruePCGaming about Frayed Knights and some "indie" issues. Most of our readers will probably be across the answers about the game although TPG places a heavy emphasis on various digital distribution issues:

Tell us about the process of submitting Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon to the various digital distribution platforms and if you encountered resistance in doing so.

There’s really no unified process. There are a lot of distribution platforms out there – it’s getting a lot like it was in the days of the casual game portals last decade. A lot of them are going to die out, but right now it’s another gold rush as they as new ones pop up almost weekly, with a slightly different approach, different features, and a different niche.

The big ones – and we all know who those are – they are pretty selective with their games, and reject more games than they accept. There’s a common misconception among gamers, who assume these are open platforms and that anybody can just “sell their game on X.”  It doesn’t work that way. I can’t just sell my game on X any more than I can just walk into Wal*Mart with a stack of CD-ROMs under my arm and set up shop there.

While I think these distribution channels are great, I do worry about indies trusting their business to a third-party who has no vested interest in them personally. This is exactly what happened to casual games just a few years ago, and while it was a wonderful gold rush at first, a lot of developers found themselves at the mercy of the portals and their businesses collapsing. Indies in general don’t do what they do for dreams of huge fortunes, but they still have to eat like everybody else.